Skinning Woes

[UK_Widowmaker]

Don't believe it!...Been working on a new Pfalz skin for about 2 weeks (very off and on)...I just went to open it in CS3...and it's saying it's corrupt.

 

Never had this problem before...it's clearly in DDS...and I can view it in a DDS viewer...but I can't open it in Photoshop!

 

Any other skinners have any ideas please?

[+Soulfreak]

You need a plugin to work/edit/view dds files in Photoshop!

Try google search: dds plugin photoshop

I have installed it and works fine!

[UK_Widowmaker]

Thanks Soulfreak...but I've been skinning for a while..so have the DDS plugin...but maybe it's corrupt?...I'll try reinstalling it

[+Polovski]

BTW be careful not to open a DDS you have previously saved to do more work on it, each time you do you will add more noise and corruption as a DDS is compressed.

Always keep a PSD or BMP etc original.

 

Also check what DDS type you saved as, some will not work in CFS3 properly. Aircraft ones should be saved as DDS1 / DXT1 no alpha usually.

[UK_Widowmaker]

BTW be careful not to open a DDS you have previously saved to do more work on it, each time you do you will add more noise and corruption as a DDS is compressed.

Always keep a PSD or BMP etc original.

 

Also check what DDS type you saved as, some will not work in CFS3 properly. Aircraft ones should be saved as DDS1 / DXT1 no alpha usually.

 

Thanks Pol....I never knew about the DDS corruption thing!....I'll add that to the Skinners section!

[nbryant]

I didn't realize that either Pol. Damn lucky I have been saving my PSD's. Qustion for you WM. I have been trying to create my shading layers by converting to grayscale then using contrast and remove the white. Seems to work pretty well but I will admit it is lacking some. What I really struggle with is creating a layer of highlights. Any advice would be deeply appreciated. I have PS 7 btw, old yeah, but it works.

[Burning Beard]

I'm not a paintshop guy, I use Corel Photo Paint for shading and airbrush type work and Corel Draw for vectors (panel lines, insignia, personal emblems). Is it possible (sure it must be) to make your layers transparent. That is what I do for shadows. I never work off of a DDS file, always do all my changes on the layers then save it as a bmp after transferring it into Corel Draw, that bmp is what I convert to a dds file.

 

Beard

 

 

 

[+Polovski]

nbryant you mean the _S texture? Best if you start as you do already I think then manually lighten and darken areas as required where you want shine if that's what you are referring to. Otherwise not sure I tend to use the burn and dodge tools myself on new copies of the layers for darkening, and use various blending on layers and various opacity settings. The artists and skinners would know more.

[Olham]

Nbryant, what you may try is this:

 

you create a second layer of your skin, and change it into greyscale, as you did.

Then copy it back into the colour skin.

Go to the "Layers" menue and make sure the grey layer is chosen, and lies above the colour layer.

 

Still in the "Layers" menue, you see two values top right, showing the opacity.

Set both on a value between 50 - 75 percent.

Then, at the left of that, you read "normal" (I hope it's the same in English Photoshop?)

 

Instead of normal, try out "soft light". Also interesting for some effects can be:

"Multiply", "Negative multiply", and "addition".

 

As I'm not sure about the English names for these, you should go through them all.

You will always get an immediate result to see, and when you click on another,

the previous one will not be kept. When you click on the above "normal", everything will

be like in the beginning.

 

You may find it helpful to add lighting and colour contrast in interesting ways.

 

And by changing the opacity values of the grey layer, you make the effects stronger or softer.

 

Enjoy!

Edited April 16, 2011 by Olham

[UK_Widowmaker]

reinstalled the DDS plugin...all works now

[nbryant]

Olham/Pol, thanks guys. I have been doing that, for the most part. Based on your responses I am on the right path and just need to keep tweaking the layer settings to achieve what I am lookng for. Only other problem now is how much time I am investing in creating templates. It is both so enjoyable and frustrating at the same time.

[Olham]

Takes long to learn it all first. Later you find better and better ways - and quicker ones.

 

Enjoy it, and you'll make good progress!

 

 

 

 

 

[sandbagger]

Olham/Pol, thanks guys. I have been doing that, for the most part. Based on your responses I am on the right path and just need to keep tweaking the layer settings to achieve what I am lookng for. Only other problem now is how much time I am investing in creating templates. It is both so enjoyable and frustrating at the same time.

 

 

Hi Nbryant,

Creating baseline texture templates does indeeed take a lot of time and effort. The OBD German aircraft skinners are worse off than me as I cover the Entente skins, which means I can in most cases create a single, multi-layered 'master texture' file, then create individual squadron skins from that file. The German aircraft skinners, for most aircraft, have to create individual skins for each particular skin they are creating (especially the colourful fighters).

 

As to highlighting - it depends on what you are trying to achieve. For the most part, light coloured highlights (sun reflection etc) are handled by the in-game lighting and the specular (-s) texture file. I've found it's not really necessary to add light coloured highlights to a skin, especially as they do not move with the aircrafts attitude. A light highlight on the top of a wing may look OK when the aircraft is flying straight and level on a clear day, but would look weird on an overcast day or if the aircraft was for instance, upside down.

 

The main shading we employ is occlusion, which is to give the impression of a blended joint area on the aircraft, rather than a clean and angular joint. A good example would be the joint between the wings and fuselage. Without occlusion, the joint areas look too clean and abrupt. In PSP 7, I add a layer at the top of the layer list and wherever there is a joint area, I spray a dark colour to the required shape, following the aerofoil shape over/under the wing on the fuselage and along the fuselage joint area. Then I gauson or motion blur and reduce the intensity enough to fade the effect down. In this way you get a faded and shaded area at the joints, which helps to blend the wing and fuselage together. If done well, it doesn't notice when the aircraft turns or banks etc, unlike light colour highlights. If you do this on your master PSP texture file, you can save to bitmap then convert to DDS. I've never worked directly of the specular file, treating it only as the base reflective file for the game lighting to use. As Pol mentioned, if you use the original DDS file as your base template, it will gradually corrupt. Always convert a DDS to bitmap and then save it as a PSP file (as the first layer). Then build all of your new layers on top of that first layer.

 

You can see this particular effect on the skin screen shots in the 'Entente face lift' post.

 

Hope this helps

Edited April 17, 2011 by sandbagger

[UK_Widowmaker]

can we sticky this in the paintshop section?

[nbryant]

Second WM's request.

 

SB - you are the man! Yes that will help a lot. It's all a matter of getting those first few layers right. After that adding the base colors is easy. Thanks for the insight!